


Tear Your Gods

by vials



Category: Secret History - Donna Tartt
Genre: Blood and Gore, Cannibalism, Gen, realistic consequences of having a bacchanal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-02
Updated: 2018-08-02
Packaged: 2019-06-20 09:14:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15531018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vials/pseuds/vials
Summary: “Normal?” Francis whispered, his voice barely audible. “My God, we—”“It’s the nature of the ritual,” Henry said calmly. “It’s been recorded for as long as the rituals themselves. People always get caught up on the carnal nature of things, I suppose, and they don’t realise the implications of the rest of it.”





	Tear Your Gods

They would never remember this moment again. Not in full. 

The morning was cold, and in the patches of grass or undergrowth sheltered from the rising sun, frost glittered. Their feet were bare and long since gone numb, and the array of marks left over them from the events of the night – cuts, grazes, bruises – were as yet unknown to them. They walked as though in a daze, one behind the other, not knowing nor caring where they were going. It was a vague sense of direction that lead them, and all of them came to the individual assumption that it was best not to question it. 

Glittering frost, the soft sway of leaves above them, the rustle as the wind began to take them off, one by one, colours already turning for the approaching fall. There was already a great deal of them underfoot, sticking to their feet, even; the blood covering them was drying, turning thick, making what little clothing remained on them cling to their skin and the chill of the wind seem even cooler than it was. 

In a way it was sobering, but still not enough that they would remember it. 

They had walked for an hour, or maybe only ten minutes. Their pace had slowed slightly, as though the exhaustion was finally catching up to them, and indeed it was coming now, that haze of sleep, the heaviness in their limbs, the way their feet dragged over the floor, further grazing the skin there. Charles’s arm was steadily dripping blood, and no one could remember when he had received the wound. Camilla’s hair was a dark reddish-brown and smelled of metal; the rest of her seemed untouched. Francis and Henry seemed most covered in the blood; streaked over their faces, their clothing, smeared on their glasses. They all stood in a tight circle, looking at one another in wonderment and horror. Henry glanced at his hand, stared for a moment, and then not so subtly wiped it against the sheets still draped over him. Some of the mess came off, but some of it was dried on, and he didn’t want to look too closely.

“What are we going to do?” Francis eventually asked. His voice was low and hoarse, as though he had barely any voice left. The wind rustled the trees above them once again, sending more leaves scattering down to the ground, and for a long moment it was his only answer. 

“We’ll go back to the house,” Henry eventually said, still looking at his hand. He wore a slight frown of confusion, one that cleared before being immediately replaced as the events of the night waxed and waned, the strange sight of his hand making sense as abruptly as all meaning left it. “Back to the car.”

“You don’t think we should return _tonight_?” Francis asked, before glancing around himself. “Or, I suppose, this morning.”

“I don’t think our absence will be missed for much longer,” Henry replied. He cleared his throat, his own voice sounding hoarse, and tasted metal there. “We’re already running far too late.”

“Well, really,” Charles said, though his voice still sounded distant, “you can’t exactly put these things on a time scale.”

“No,” Henry agreed, glancing at him, “but I don’t think it would be wise to stay at the house for the rest of the day. Do you? I rather think we should head back.”

Camilla made a strange sound, almost like she had been about to say something but had the air squeezed out of her at the last moment. They all looked at her and she gave a small smile, gesturing to her throat.

“Are you alright?” Francis asked, and she waved her hand and pointed at her throat again.

“She means she’s lost her voice,” Charles said. 

“Goodness,” Francis said, peering at her. “Is that normal?”

“I don’t think anything about this is exactly normal,” Charles replied. “Henry, what are you doing?”

They turned to look at him again, and for a moment what they saw was inexplicable. Henry was standing quite still, looking at his hand – the one covered in the most blood; the one covered in the other things, too, if they allowed themselves to look or to think about it. The chunks of dark grey, the slivers of white, stuck to his hand in the blood no matter how many times he tried to wipe it clean. He was staring at the hand hard, as though he had never seen it before, and his mouth twitched slightly before he looked back at them, another small frown of confusion on his face, and let his hand drop to his side.

“Henry?” Francis asked weakly, as though the news of Camilla’s voice had made him unable to bear anything else that looked as though it might leave the forest with them; he hadn’t considered the fact that there might be permanent repercussions for doing such a thing, and now he was at no loss for imagining. 

Henry said nothing. Instead he reached up with his other hand, the cleaner one, and, slowly and with great concentration, put a finger into his mouth and appeared to pick at his teeth. As everyone watched, he moved his finger around for a moment and then, slowly, withdrew it.

Between his finger and thumb he held a small sliver of bone. 

There was a long silence. The trees swayed around them; somewhere, distantly, a bird called. They were standing in a small clearing and the sun had been marginally warmer than their walk through the thicker trees, but now any warmth it appeared to have had vanished. Henry stared at the small sliver in his hand for what felt like minutes, and then, slowly, deliberately, he held it away from himself and flicked it, giving the impression that it had simply vanished from his fingers in a flash. Nobody followed it in an attempt to see where it landed. Their eyes were all firmly on Henry. 

He met their gaze eventually, glancing around at each of them and then looking up, squinting into the light. The silence ticked on, and then he seemed to shake himself out of whatever stupor had come over him. He cleared his throat and looked at them all again, three pale blood-covered faces, both horrified at him and realising the implications for themselves. 

“That part,” Henry said eventually, “is actually rather normal.”

“Normal?” Francis whispered, his voice barely audible. “My God, we—”

“It’s the nature of the ritual,” Henry said calmly. “It’s been recorded for as long as the rituals themselves. People always get caught up on the carnal nature of things, I suppose, and they don’t realise the implications of the rest of it. Sometimes it’s an animal – a bull, usually, I’m sure you’d be unsurprised to know – and as a rule it tends to be ripped apart with the bare hands and eaten raw. Regardless, the term used is often _animal_ , and man is nothing but an animal. At any rate, I know of several occasions where Dionysus has caused revellers to _believe_ that what they are consuming is a farm animal, but is actually a man.”

Camilla was chewing quite violently on one of her nails. She gave a particularly ferocious tug, and Charles reached over, slapping her hand. She moved it away from her mouth; there was a dribble of blood there. 

Francis looked rather green. “I don’t remember any of that.”

“Nor do I,” Henry admitted, “but I don’t suppose any of us can deny the facts.”

Charles turned his head and spat, pointedly, on the ground. There was blood there, the spit tinged pink, and he pushed his tongue around his mouth as though looking for injuries. He was visibly dismayed to find none.

“Check your hands,” Henry said, and reluctantly the others looked. “Do you see? Under your fingernails. We must have—”

“Don’t say it,” Francis moaned. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

He stumbled away; they heard him crashing through the undergrowth and then, seconds later, retching. 

“I can’t blame him,” Charles said, almost absentmindedly wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “I don’t think I’ll be far behind him.”

“It won’t make much of a difference,” Henry said serenely. “It’s already done.”

“It doesn’t mean I want to—you know what? It doesn’t matter. Forget I ever said anything.” He shuddered. “I kind of want to forget this entire conversation, actually.”

“I don’t think we’ll remember too much of it,” Henry said. “To be quite honest with you, I can feel it all slipping away already. It feels dreamlike. I wonder how much we will remember.”

“Do you want to remember?” Charles asked, as Francis stumbled back to them, still looking strikingly pale.

“Of course I do,” Henry said, frowning. “Why wouldn’t I? Do you have any idea what we did here?”

Camilla gave a small smile, looking almost giddy, not unlike a child emerging, bright-eyed and flushed, from an evening at a carnival. She met Henry’s eye and held his gaze for a moment, spotting the smallest of returned smiles on his lips. Charles and Francis exchanged a look, and Charles sighed, his shoulders slumping.

“I suppose,” he said. “Alright. What we did was— was something else entirely, I’ll admit that, but goodness. I didn’t expect…”

“What did you expect?” Henry asked, and Charles shook his head.

“I have no idea, actually.”

“Not _that_ ,” Francis put in, swallowing hard. “I thought I was going to check if there was anything, you know, that _came up_ , but I didn’t have the nerve to do it.”

“Thanks, Francis,” Charles said, as, following Henry’s lead, they began walking again. “Really didn’t want to know that.”

“I don’t know why you’re all acting so strange over it,” Henry said, before correcting himself after an indignant noise from Camilla. “Well, why the two of you are, anyway. If you’d done even the most _basic_ of reading on such things, you would know that this is all part of the ritual. How do you think you’re going to act, reverted to an animalistic state? It’s not exactly going to be civilised.”

“I _know_ that kind of thing happens,” Charles said, annoyed, “but I just didn’t consider it would happen. We were out in the middle of nowhere. That’s _why_ we came out here. To try and avoid coming across anyone because of this exact reason.”

“So, what?” Henry asked. “Are you saying that you were alright with the idea of it being one of us?”

There was a beat of silence.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Charles said haughtily.

“Well, allow me to explain,” Henry said. “We came out here to avoid the risk of anyone uninvolved witnessing or getting caught up in this – obviously this didn’t work, but we tried. But that does leave the fact that this was always a possibility, and that the only other victims of such a thing would be one of us. Do you remember how we looked at one another when you found me? Camilla, I’m not sure where you were, but Francis, Charles? I thought we were about to murder one another for a moment, we were so hostile. Had we not caught a proper glimpse of one another who knows what could have happened? Who knows the state one of us might have ended up in? Surely you must know it was a risk. To be honest with you, with that in mind it’s surely better it was a stranger rather than any of us.”

Another silence, this one lasting much longer. They walked at a steady pace, slowed down as exhaustion caught up; realised how late it was getting and began walking again. By the time they began to recognise the wilderness around them it felt as though days had passed, though according to the sun in the sky it couldn’t have been more than a few hours.

“Should we clean up?” Francis asked, looking almost longingly back at the house, and Henry shook his head.

“We should just go back. It’s not even properly light yet.” 

“I could have sworn the sun was higher when we were in that clearing,” Charles said, shielding his eyes and peering at it. “How strange.”

“A lot of things are going to be strange now,” Henry said, though he sounded almost fond; elated. “Come on. We have a lot of cleaning up to do.”

Francis swallowed. He could still taste blood.


End file.
